Chat room access control

ABSTRACT

In one embodiment, a request to join an electronic chat room is received from a requester. A selection of an access control level for the requester is received via a user interface in order to grant the requester access to the electronic chat room according to a condition for granting access. The user interface is used to assign a selected access control level to the requester, thereupon granting access to the requester. The requester&#39;s access to content available in the electronic chat room being limited based on the selected access control level. Related methods, apparatus, and systems are also described.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.15/196,063, filed Jun. 29, 2016, the contents of which is incorporatedherein by reference in its entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure generally relates to methods and systems forcontrolling access to chat rooms.

BACKGROUND

Many systems for locking chat rooms are known in the art. For example, amoderator may be able to lock a room. In such systems, people are unableto join a chat room unless they are expressly invited. There are alsomethods known for blocking existing chat rooms so that such rooms do notappear when they are searched for.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present disclosure will be understood and appreciated more fullyfrom the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with thedrawings in which:

FIG. 1 is a simplified pictorial illustration of a first view of a chatroom application constructed and operative in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a simplified pictorial illustration of a room request dialogbox in the chat room application of FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a simplified pictorial illustration of a second view of thechat room application of FIG. 1; and

FIG. 4 is a simplified flowchart of a method for implementingembodiments of FIG. 1.

DESCRIPTION OF EXAMPLE EMBODIMENTS Overview

In one embodiment, a request to join an electronic chat room is receivedfrom a requester. A selection of an access control level for therequester is received via a user interface in order to grant therequester access to the electronic chat room according to a conditionfor granting access. The user interface is used to assign a selectedaccess control level to the requester, thereupon granting access to therequester. The requester's access to content available in the electronicchat room being limited based on the selected access control level.Related methods, apparatus, and systems are also described.

Example Embodiments

Reference is now made to FIG. 1, which is a simplified pictorialillustration of a first view of a chat room application 100 constructedand operative in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.FIG. 1, depicts a view of a chat application 100 of a hypothetical user,Andrew. The depiction of the exemplary application window showing thechat application 100 of FIG. 1 shows several portions in the applicationwindow:

-   -   a list of chat rooms 110 in chronological order, which shows        several chats (i.e. conversations) which a user of the chat room        application is (or has at one time) participated in, the most        recently visited chat room listed first;    -   a message portion 120, which shows various messages 123 a, 123        b, 123 c, in one particular chat, such as highlighted chat        “Iceberg” 125. Andrew is a participant in the Iceberg 125 chat        room, and has moderator rights in the Iceberg. There is also a        section for typing new messages 127 in the message portion 120;    -   a list of participants 140 in the current chat, which also        indicates the number of participants in the chat (three, in the        present example). Andrew is indicated as “Me” in the list of        participants 140. Andrew's moderator status is also indicated;        and    -   a list of files 150 which have been added or uploaded to the        chat, which also indicates the number of files already uploaded        in the chat (one, in the present example).

It is appreciated that the term “conversation”, as used above, may, insome applications refer to individual “chat rooms”. The terms“conversation”, “chat room”, and “chat”, in their various grammaticalforms, may be used interchangeably in the present application andclaims.

The list of files 150 mentioned above indicates that, in the presentchat, Iceberg 125, one file has been uploaded (i.e. added to the chat).The file 160 itself, in the present example, named “Group chatpresentation.ppt” appears in both the message portion 120 of the chatapplication window, and in the list of files 150. It is appreciated thatas more messages are added to the chat, the file 160 will gradually bepushed down, out of the visible portion of the message portion 120. Thefile 160 is available to the participants 140 in the chat for viewingand downloading. As is noted in the description above of the messageportion 120, the file 160 was uploaded by Andrew.

Since the chat room, such as the Iceberg conversation 125 is apersistent chat room, participants in the chat room, such as theparticipants appearing in the list of participants 140 may not beconcerned that their messages and files in a particular chat room arevisible and accessible to those already in the chat room, i.e. Iceberg125. However, should an additional or outside party be added to the chatroom at a later date—whether inadvertently or deliberately—theconfidentiality of those messages may become compromised.

In one embodiment, access control is exercised over admission of a newparticipant in the room by way of an access granting condition. By wayof example, and without limiting the generality of the foregoing, accessto the chat room may be granted according to any of the followingconditions:

Veto all the room participants must grant access to a new person beinginvited to join the room (before they are officially invited or added).Majority a majority vote of room participants is required in order togrant access to a new person being invited to join the room (before theyare officially invited or added). Moderator at least one specificparticipant in the chat room control having moderator status can grantaccess to a new person being invited to join the room (before they areofficially invited or added). It is appreciated that some embodimentsmay require a majority of moderators, or may provide a veto to a singlemoderator, in order to approve a new participant or to deny a(potential) participant rights to participate in the chat.

These criteria (i.e., veto, majority, moderator control) to add a newparticipant into the chat room may be established, in some embodiments,when the chat room is first set up. Alternatively, there might be adomain wide policy (e.g. all chat rooms established inside a givencompany may require “Veto” or “Moderator Control” for adding a newmember.

It is appreciated that the creator of a new chat room automaticallybecomes a moderator. The creator of the room who is a moderator, canthen assign other moderators to a chat room. There may be a mechanismenabling appointing new moderators:

a veto of all members or just the existing moderators may prevent a newmoderator from being appointed;

a majority vote of all members or just the existing moderators berequired in order to appointed a new moderator, or

a moderator may appoint a new moderator.

Reference is now made to FIG. 2, which is a simplified pictorialillustration of a room request dialog box 210 in the chat roomapplication of FIG. 1. In FIG. 2, Andrew, a moderator, gets a roomrequest dialog from Jack who wants to join the Iceberg 125 chat room.The room request dialog box 210 comprises a legend, such as legend 220,which indicates that “Jack Smith would like to join the Iceberg room”.Assuming, in view of the above discussion that a single moderator, suchas Andrew, can add a new participant to the chat room, then Andrew mayselect one of option buttons 230, enabling Jack to:

View all files and messages which have been and will be uploaded to thechat room;

View only messages, but not files, which have been and will be uploadedto the chat room;

View only files, but not messages, which have been and will be uploadedto the chat room; or

Press Cancel 240, effectively denying Jack's request to join the Icebergchat room 125.

Alternatively, the moderator, Andrew, may invite Jack to join the chatroom, and in such a case, the moderator would set the privileges of theinvitee (Jack in this case) prior to sending the invitation.

In the present example, Andrew does not want Jack to see the file postedto the room so selects the appropriate one of the option buttons 230,i.e. “Only view messages”.

Additionally, Andrew has the option to limit Jack's viewing rights 250,such that Jack may only see messages which were posted after a certaindate, Feb. 12, 2015, in the present example. Earlier messages will notappear on Jack's chat application 300 (FIG. 3, below; analogous toAndrew's chat application 100, of FIG. 1).

When Andrew has finished granting Jack's rights, Andrew clicks OK 260 inorder to close the room request dialog box 210, thereby enabling Jack'sentry to the chat room.

In some embodiments, a new member of the chat room, such as the Icebergchat room 125, may be granted access until a certain date. For example,Jack may see all content, but only until the 31st December.Additionally, various combinations of the above mentioned conditions mayalso exist. For example, Jack may be able to view content added to thechat room after 1 June and until 31 December.

It is appreciated that the moderators may extend the rights of aparticipant in the chat room. For example, a person who has been grantedaccess until a certain date may have their rights extended by amoderator, or by a vote of the other chat room participants (asdiscussed above). Alternatively, a person who may only view comments ormay only view files may have their rights extended to be able to viewall postings in the chat room. For example, Jack's access may beextended beyond an assigned access control level which exceeds Jack'soriginal assigned access control level.

Moderators may exercise other forms of content access control, besidesthe example provided in FIG. 2. Content access control may be granted,for instance, by person, as in FIG. 2. That is to say, viewing rightsmay be granted to each new participant in a chat room on a per personbasis. The viewing rights may be granted depending on a type of content(e.g. files vs. messages). Alternatively, viewing rights may be granted,for instance, by content. For instance, some chat rooms may be open toanyone who wishes to join that chat room. However, a poster, at the timewhen the poster is making a post (whether a new message or a file) maylimit access to the post: Andrew may not view a file; Jack may view thefile, but not download it; Sarah may view a message, and so forth.

In addition to the moderator, the uploader of content may also be ableto define viewing rights to the content. Accordingly, if Sarah uploadscontent to the room, Sarah may, at the time when the content isuploaded, define rights to the content in a fashion similar to themoderator's ability to define rights to the chat room.

In still a further embodiment, content access control may be granted onthe basis of domain. Files and messages in a chat room may be open toviewing to participants in the chat room from within one domain, may beviewable but not downloadable from a second domain, and may not beviewable at all from a third domain. By way of example, if Andrew isposting from within the www.Andrew.net domain, Andrew may allow otherchat room participant's inside the www.Andrew.net domain to have fullaccess to his posts. However, Andrew may elect to deny access to chatroom participants from within the www.competitor.org domain.Alternatively, Andrew may elect to make his posts viewable, but notdownloadable to chat room participants from www.some_other_domain.com.

In another embodiment, one member of a chat room may not be able to seemessages and or content from one or more other members of the chat room.For example, a group of employees may be prevented from seeing messagesand content posted by supervisors and managers.

In still another embodiment, content access control may be granted onthe basis of time. By way of example, files and messages in a room maybe redacted based on date posted, e.g. a new entrant to a chat room mayjust be given access only to postings from last two weeks.

Reference is now made to FIG. 3, which is a simplified pictorialillustration of a second view of the chat room application of FIG. 1.FIG. 3 depicts Jack's chat room application 300, which is analogous toAndrew's chat room application 100, depicted in FIG. 1. It can now beseen, by viewing the list of participants 140 that Jack has been addedas a participant—the number of participants has been incremented to fournow that Jack is a participant in the Iceberg 125 chat room. Since thisis Jack's chat room application 300, Jack is indicated as “me”. Andrew,the moderator, now appears as a participant in the list.

Additionally, since Jack's ability to view files which have beenuploaded to the Iceberg 125 chat room was redacted (as discussed above,with reference to FIG. 2), the file 160 which appeared in FIG. 1 now isshown either as a restricted file, as, for example, in the case of thebox showing a key 360, or, alternatively, the list of files 150 (FIG. 1)which showed 1 uploaded file now appears in Jack's chat application 300as a list of files 350 showing zero uploaded files 370. In someembodiments, Jack could be allowed to request access to the file (forinstance where the box showing a key 360 appears). In alternativeembodiments, the file may not show at all (for instance where the listof files 350 shows zero uploaded files 370).

It is also appreciated that Jack may scroll through messages appearingin the message portion 120 and view messages appearing from 12 Feb.2015, but not prior to that date.

In some embodiments explained above, a new participant in the chat room,such as Jack, may be granted total or limited access to future posts andtotal; limited or no access to previous posts.

In other embodiments, content in chat rooms may be designated asprivate, and for example, limited to only original participants in thechat room, or open to external or new parties.

Accordingly, in view of FIGS. 1 and 3, it can be seen that in a singlechat room, different participants in the chat room may have differentviews of the chat room, depending on their individual privileges in thechat room.

It is appreciated that each item that get posted in the chat room, suchas the Iceberg 125 chat room will be associated (“tagged”) withmetadata. The metadata will include the identity of the poster, and thedate and time the post was made. Thus, for example, the file Group chatpresentation.ppt will be tagged as posted by Andrew Henderson at aparticular date and time. Thus, when a new member is added to the chatroom, such as Jack Smith, in the example of FIGS. 2 and 3, a serverwhich stores the contents of the chat room will be able to determine,according to the rights granted to the new member, what contents of thechat room should be made available to the new member.

In some embodiments, links may be posted to the chat room, rather thancontent. So, a link to a networked presentation, for example, may beposted, rather than the file 160 itself (i.e. Group chatpresentation.ppt). In such a case, all of the various possibleembodiments described herein above would apply—i.e. the messages can beseen; or cannot be seen by a particular user; within a given domain,etc. Additionally, the rights of the user who clicks the link to viewthe file 160 may be restricted by the location of the file 160. Forexample, and without limiting the generality of the foregoing, a filewhich is available via a cloud based service would also be restrictedaccording to the cloud based service rights of the user trying to accessthe file.

The server, accordingly, will store a table which identifies the rightsfor each participant. The each item in the chat room can then be testedagainst the participant's rights. For example, the server will only makefiles visible to a participant who can only view files but not posts ina particular chat room. For a participant who can only view posts butnot files in a particular chat room, the server will make the postsvisible.

Reference is now made to FIG. 4, which is a simplified flowchart of amethod for implementing embodiments of FIG. 1. The method of FIG. 4 isbelieved to be self-explanatory with reference to the above discussion.

It is appreciated that software components of the present invention may,if desired, be implemented in ROM (read only memory) form. The softwarecomponents may, generally, be implemented in hardware, if desired, usingconventional techniques. It is further appreciated that the softwarecomponents may be instantiated, for example: as a computer programproduct or on a tangible medium. In some cases, it may be possible toinstantiate the software components as a signal interpretable by anappropriate computer, although such an instantiation may be excluded incertain embodiments of the present invention.

It is appreciated that various features of the invention which are, forclarity, described in the contexts of separate embodiments may also beprovided in combination in a single embodiment. Conversely, variousfeatures of the invention which are, for brevity, described in thecontext of a single embodiment may also be provided separately or in anysuitable subcombination.

It will be appreciated by persons skilled in the art that the presentinvention is not limited by what has been particularly shown anddescribed hereinabove. Rather the scope of the invention is defined bythe appended claims and equivalents thereof:

1. A method comprising: enabling a moderator to control access of a userto content of an electronic chat room via a plurality of access levels;receiving a selection, by the moderator, of one of the plurality ofaccess levels; and assigning the one of the plurality of access levelsto the user to limit the access of the user to the content based on acertain date.
 2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the pluralityof access levels is associated with a plurality of conditions forgranting access, the plurality of conditions including a veto condition,a majority condition, and a moderator approval condition.
 3. The methodaccording to claim 2, wherein the veto condition requires granting ofaccess to be approved by all participants in the electronic chat roomprior to granting access.
 4. The method according to claim 2, whereinthe majority condition requires approval of a majority of allparticipants in the electronic chat room prior to granting access. 5.The method according to claim 1, further comprising: limiting the accessto at least one of messages or files posted in the electronic chat roomprior to the certain date.
 6. The method according to claim 1, furthercomprising: limiting the access to at least one of messages or filesposted in the electronic chat room after the certain date.
 7. The methodaccording to claim 1, further comprising: limiting the access to atleast one of messages or files posted in the electronic chat roombetween a first date and a second date.
 8. The method according to claim1, further comprising: limiting the access to the content available inthe electronic chat room comprises allowing full access to one ofmessages or files available in the electronic chat room.
 9. The methodaccording to claim 1, wherein the content available in the electronicchat room comprises messages available in the electronic chat room. 10.The method according to claim 1, wherein the content available in theelectronic chat room comprises files available in the electronic chatroom.
 11. The method according to claim 1, wherein the content availablein the electronic chat room is stored on a remote server.
 12. The methodaccording to claim 11, wherein the content stored on the remote serveris stored with associated metadata tags.
 13. The method according toclaim 1, wherein a view of the electronic chat room available to theuser is determined, at least in part, by the access granted to the user.14. The method according to claim 1, further comprising: receiving arequest to join the electronic chat room by a non-participant of theelectronic chat room.
 15. The method according to claim 1, furthercomprising: receiving a request to join the electronic chat room by aparticipant of the electronic chat room on behalf of a non-participantof the electronic chat room.
 16. The method according to claim 1,further comprising: extending the access beyond the one of the pluralityof access levels to a new access control level which exceeds the one ofthe plurality of access levels.
 17. The method according to claim 1,further comprising: limiting access to new content which is added to theelectronic chat room on a per participant basis.
 18. The methodaccording to claim 17, wherein the limiting of the access to the newcontent is performed by the moderator.
 19. The method according to claim17, wherein the limiting of the access to the new content is performedby a poster of the new content.
 20. A user interface system forcontrolling access to a chat room, the user interface system comprising:a computer-readable memory with software which, when executed, cause theuser interface system to: enable a moderator to control access of a userto content of an electronic chat room via a plurality of access levels;receive a selection, by the moderator, of one of the plurality of accesslevels; and assign the one of the plurality of access levels to the userto limit the access of the user to the content based on a certain date.